February 21, 2011

Modern Pterosaurs and the Marfa Light

Most sites on the Texas Marfa Lights fall into one of three categories:

No reasonable explanation, truly mysterious

Car headlights

Unknown species of large bioluminescent flying creatures

Those rare type of flying lights in southwest Texas, the kind labeled "CE-III" by the scientist James Bunnell, behave strangely, seeming to some local residents like "dancing devils." What would cause such a strange designation? It's the seeming intelligent direction, the splitting and rejoining, reminiscent of line dancing. That behavior has been labeled "complex" by Bunnell. But what is more complex than the behavior of a group of intelligent predators that hunt as a group?

[Marfa Lights] appear in pairs or groups . . . to divide into pairs or merge together, to disappear and reappear, and sometimes to move in seemingly regular patterns . . . just above bushes south of Marfa. What causes these strange flying lights? . . . Now a new hypothesis has emerged: a group of bioluminescent flying predators . . . guaranteed to shock most Americans.

There is no coorelation with Solar Halos, and those major solar eruptions slam into the magnetosphere most violently. If the solar wind caused those mysterious Marfa Lights during those seven and a half years, there would surely be a relationship with Solar Halos; there was no relationship.

. . . James Bunnell recognizes the night-mirage phenomenon that sometimes makes car headlights appear strange-looking southwest of Marfa, Texas. But a few times each year very different lights make their appearance, with much different characteristics of behavior, color, and flight patterns. Those more-rare appearances of dancing lights or flying lights Bunnell has labeled "CE-III" ML (Mystery Lights).

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that a controversay has been flying around concerning the meaning of Marfa Lights. Are all strange lights in the vicinity of Marfa, Texas, car headlights from that one highway southwest of the viewing platform? . . . [Bunnell's] book “Hunting Marfa Lights” makes it clear that many flying lights south of the viewing platform are very different, bearing no resemblence to even the most distorted night-mirage of car headlights.

Conclusion

Do we yet have any firm scientific conclusion on what causes Marfa Lights of type CE-III? Of course scientific evidence against night-mirages of car headlights is not proof that the lights come from bioluminescent pterosaurs. But when the evidences suggesting intelligent flying predators is so obvious, why not investigate further? Why not consider some kind of unknown species of flying predator?